I realized all these great albums I liked came out in 1969. What else came out then? A lot of shit, most of which I've heard. But not this! And I did like the later-name-shortened-band-name'd T-Rex's stuff.
Here things are still pretty folky, and pretty messy, in a ratio of amazing to annoying of roughly 3-to-2. Good, but not dominant, that ratio. Bolan's whiny whinny of a voice trills and swoons and vibratos wildly, sounding at times a bit ridiculous. And the actual musicianship is often sloppy, repetitive and indulgent. Evenings of Damask sounds like open mic night gone wrong, or maybe a the bad end of a Jet Ski Accident session.
But sometimes that messiness works - with the oohs and ahhs and noises and ulations rising euphoric with tribal, simpler-than-now pulse. See Nijinsky Hind in particular, it just really just works. And in other places, structure and discipline and melody coalesce impossible, making these really timeless pieces of folk beauty shimmer into place. As in the next two late game tracks, Pilgrim's Tale and The Misty Coast of Albany both, which lift the album to new levels on the way out. Another case for my track-position-role analysis that I keep putting off.
You can also hear the echoes of the songs to come here, with Chariots of Silk setting the blueprint for that balance of stomp and swoon and mess and spine that we would see on tracks like Cosmic Dancer. Which is fun.
Overall, if you have any interest in glam, you better have an interest in T Rex, and from there you ought to have an interest in this. It's a listen I'm really glad to have taken the time for, bridging styles and band eras and sounds in ways that give a little bit of the cosmic shiver 4/5
You might like this if: you like slightly freaky folk, don't mind ramshackle, rough-edges trippy indulgence, and have an interest in some of glam's buried foundations.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
#384 Washed Out - Within and Without
Brit'd! Well, partially. Several people have mentioned these guys lately, and they got fork'd pretty good, so I guess I'd better keep up. Recovering, recovering, cred returning, if slowly.
This treads some pretty well-traveled ground, wallowing in the kind of reverb-drenched, near-ambient, minimally-beated emotional soakins that are popular these days, sounding most obviously like Cut Copy (who they're sharing a stage with soon, I hear!) in their echoing-off-the-stars night-lasting-forever sentimentality.
Which is a backhanded assessment that's not inaccurate, but not really very fair. There's more here. For one, the production here is pretty darn brilliant, with plenty of tones, bleeps, surges, basslines and drums that are fraught with nuance and perfectly balanced. Listen to Far Away's Ratatat surges, crisp rattle skitches, nuanced bass, rumbling strings, perfectly honed thump thumps - whatever this scene's tricks are, these guys are performing them far better than is strictly necessary.
There are other details that elevate this too, most notably on Before, where a single, clipped, broken, incomprehensible vocal sample, repeated again and again builds an unbelievable amount of tension that the rest of the song strives (not altogether successfully) to sooth with synths. It reminds me quite a lot of early M83, America in particular, where fragments go by and flick your brainstem near-subliminally.
One last thing I appreciate is the album's brisk pacing, done in 40 minutes. It makes an otherwise overbearing experience a bit more precious, and inspires repeated listenings, and therefore the kind of track-level repetition needed to get music like this properly scratched into your soul. It's something few bands outside of Radiohead have figured out: shorter albums are sometimes better. Let a gesture be the size it naturally should be, it doesn't need to bloat to fit your concept of a 55 minute masterstroke.
I don't think this is quite my scene, but what it does, it does admirably enough to earn my respect and my interest 4/5
You might like this if: you want to hear synths upon synths upon samples upon samples, perfectly balanced, that will make you long, even if you don't know quite what for.
This treads some pretty well-traveled ground, wallowing in the kind of reverb-drenched, near-ambient, minimally-beated emotional soakins that are popular these days, sounding most obviously like Cut Copy (who they're sharing a stage with soon, I hear!) in their echoing-off-the-stars night-lasting-forever sentimentality.
Which is a backhanded assessment that's not inaccurate, but not really very fair. There's more here. For one, the production here is pretty darn brilliant, with plenty of tones, bleeps, surges, basslines and drums that are fraught with nuance and perfectly balanced. Listen to Far Away's Ratatat surges, crisp rattle skitches, nuanced bass, rumbling strings, perfectly honed thump thumps - whatever this scene's tricks are, these guys are performing them far better than is strictly necessary.
There are other details that elevate this too, most notably on Before, where a single, clipped, broken, incomprehensible vocal sample, repeated again and again builds an unbelievable amount of tension that the rest of the song strives (not altogether successfully) to sooth with synths. It reminds me quite a lot of early M83, America in particular, where fragments go by and flick your brainstem near-subliminally.
One last thing I appreciate is the album's brisk pacing, done in 40 minutes. It makes an otherwise overbearing experience a bit more precious, and inspires repeated listenings, and therefore the kind of track-level repetition needed to get music like this properly scratched into your soul. It's something few bands outside of Radiohead have figured out: shorter albums are sometimes better. Let a gesture be the size it naturally should be, it doesn't need to bloat to fit your concept of a 55 minute masterstroke.
I don't think this is quite my scene, but what it does, it does admirably enough to earn my respect and my interest 4/5
You might like this if: you want to hear synths upon synths upon samples upon samples, perfectly balanced, that will make you long, even if you don't know quite what for.
#383 Wu Lyf - Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
Brit rec'd!
I don't have time to write out whole words! I'm a busy guy!
This is kind of a gorgeous slice of something. There's a magical, ominous quality about the arrival of the first notes, with the drums, organs, bass, all interlocked and separate, flying in formation. It lies halfway between the classic Broken Social Scene unfoldenating openers and Wolf Parades melodic modest mousisms, bursting and bursting with careening energy, and then falling off a cliff to silence suddenly, gone and gone.
The rest of the album follows that latter reference point pretty closely, with Wolf Parade's shredded throat shouting, chiming guitars, and infectious desperation. But it's something more than that. There's something much more live about this, something of Man Man's manic grasping, early Animal Collective's wildman pulse, of tones unheard. It sounds a bit like Fielding would sound if Fielding was the opposite of Fielding; its possible that even the people who would get my usual watery domestic indie Fielding reference don't know what I'm talking about this time, but onward and onward, in the Wu Lyf spirit, onward.
Part of it is that the production is just unbelievable. It doesn't sound particularly overproduced, with all these ragged edges and overblown angles and the frailness in the details (holy shit the stick taps on Dirt), but has a perfect, looming dominant hugeness that cannot be achieved on accident. It's that bass too, that taps into something in my teen years that I can't place that and breaks my shit.
I feel like this needs more time. There's something universal and important in this that I can't put my finger on, and that's a rare feeling for a music listener as jaded as myself 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like indie with a frantic edge, and are willing to trade simplicity of hook for mystery.
I don't have time to write out whole words! I'm a busy guy!
This is kind of a gorgeous slice of something. There's a magical, ominous quality about the arrival of the first notes, with the drums, organs, bass, all interlocked and separate, flying in formation. It lies halfway between the classic Broken Social Scene unfoldenating openers and Wolf Parades melodic modest mousisms, bursting and bursting with careening energy, and then falling off a cliff to silence suddenly, gone and gone.
The rest of the album follows that latter reference point pretty closely, with Wolf Parade's shredded throat shouting, chiming guitars, and infectious desperation. But it's something more than that. There's something much more live about this, something of Man Man's manic grasping, early Animal Collective's wildman pulse, of tones unheard. It sounds a bit like Fielding would sound if Fielding was the opposite of Fielding; its possible that even the people who would get my usual watery domestic indie Fielding reference don't know what I'm talking about this time, but onward and onward, in the Wu Lyf spirit, onward.
Part of it is that the production is just unbelievable. It doesn't sound particularly overproduced, with all these ragged edges and overblown angles and the frailness in the details (holy shit the stick taps on Dirt), but has a perfect, looming dominant hugeness that cannot be achieved on accident. It's that bass too, that taps into something in my teen years that I can't place that and breaks my shit.
I feel like this needs more time. There's something universal and important in this that I can't put my finger on, and that's a rare feeling for a music listener as jaded as myself 4.5/5
You might like this if: you like indie with a frantic edge, and are willing to trade simplicity of hook for mystery.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
#382 The Drums - The Drums
Allston music scene's showing me how out of the loop I am. Get with it!
It's an album of two halves - the first is a lot of fun, with that early-aughts-relentless ts-ts-ts-ts-TS-ts-ts-ts-ts-ts-TS-ts cymbaltap wave of mutilation, sounding like an even-more-precise Futureheads, Franz Ferdinand or The Strokes*. Each of the first 5 or so songs has that perfectly crooned vocal hooks, rife with dancefloor longing, and at least one standout signature synth gesture. Let's Go Surfing in particular is kind of a a brilliant combination: Weezer-simple yearning, Young Folks whistles, all atop a relentless, hard-on-the-3 motorik. Music for taking the 405 to Malibu.
Surf Wax Germany.
Suddenly everything runs really ambient and heavy right as you hit Down by The Water though (which weirdly mirrors The Futureheads' debut's slowest track, Danger of the Water?). I'm all for a slow jam in the eye of the cymbalstorm, but the album doesn't ever quite rise out if it, sounding a step slow thereafter. Maybe you can only sustain that kind of pace for so long, but that energy drop kind of keeps this from being a straightthrough listen for me.
I mostly like it though. Each song is a bit too repetitive, running on a bit too long, but there's a good, steady little heart at the middle. Plus, I have to confess to some degree of nostalgia: see the namedrops above, not to mention the Ben Folds wink of Forever and Ever Amen. It strikes me as an album aimed squarely at the slightly older hipster set, which I guess I have to (reluctantly, on several levels) count myself among - well done then, The Drums 3.5/5
You might like this if: you spent your 20's listening to precise thrubthrubthrub bass and tststs drums and want to dance like its two thousand and five.
* and a little bit like something the World's Largest Band might have generated.
It's an album of two halves - the first is a lot of fun, with that early-aughts-relentless ts-ts-ts-ts-TS-ts-ts-ts-ts-ts-TS-ts cymbaltap wave of mutilation, sounding like an even-more-precise Futureheads, Franz Ferdinand or The Strokes*. Each of the first 5 or so songs has that perfectly crooned vocal hooks, rife with dancefloor longing, and at least one standout signature synth gesture. Let's Go Surfing in particular is kind of a a brilliant combination: Weezer-simple yearning, Young Folks whistles, all atop a relentless, hard-on-the-3 motorik. Music for taking the 405 to Malibu.
Surf Wax Germany.
Suddenly everything runs really ambient and heavy right as you hit Down by The Water though (which weirdly mirrors The Futureheads' debut's slowest track, Danger of the Water?). I'm all for a slow jam in the eye of the cymbalstorm, but the album doesn't ever quite rise out if it, sounding a step slow thereafter. Maybe you can only sustain that kind of pace for so long, but that energy drop kind of keeps this from being a straightthrough listen for me.
I mostly like it though. Each song is a bit too repetitive, running on a bit too long, but there's a good, steady little heart at the middle. Plus, I have to confess to some degree of nostalgia: see the namedrops above, not to mention the Ben Folds wink of Forever and Ever Amen. It strikes me as an album aimed squarely at the slightly older hipster set, which I guess I have to (reluctantly, on several levels) count myself among - well done then, The Drums 3.5/5
You might like this if: you spent your 20's listening to precise thrubthrubthrub bass and tststs drums and want to dance like its two thousand and five.
* and a little bit like something the World's Largest Band might have generated.
Friday, August 5, 2011
#381 Twin Sister - Color Your LIfe EP
I felt like I kept seeing these folks mentioned, figured I'd better find out what the fuss is. So out of touch.
It's interesting stuff. Heavy, ambient, textured, arty, slathered in reverb, all hooked together in unpredictable, interesting ways; so packed with details that this kind of first-listen review is even more useless than usual. I feel like I'm still kind of figuring it out. Some songs work better than others: Galaxy Plateau is just too ambient for me, but The Other Side of Your Face has a great motorik pulse at heart, while All Around and Away We Go sounds like something off a late Air album, from an alternate universe where they got more interesting as time when on, instead of more boring.
And of course, at the center is Andrea Estella's voice, which is one of those raspy, breathy, nervous, hyper-affected beasts that I never know quite what to make of, landing somewhere between a weirder Laurie Anderson and a toned-down Joanna Newsom. It's a curious one. It didn't quite move me, but it piqued my interest 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like interesting, dense, reverby, deliberately-paced art-rock and/or delicate, wily female vocals.
It's interesting stuff. Heavy, ambient, textured, arty, slathered in reverb, all hooked together in unpredictable, interesting ways; so packed with details that this kind of first-listen review is even more useless than usual. I feel like I'm still kind of figuring it out. Some songs work better than others: Galaxy Plateau is just too ambient for me, but The Other Side of Your Face has a great motorik pulse at heart, while All Around and Away We Go sounds like something off a late Air album, from an alternate universe where they got more interesting as time when on, instead of more boring.
And of course, at the center is Andrea Estella's voice, which is one of those raspy, breathy, nervous, hyper-affected beasts that I never know quite what to make of, landing somewhere between a weirder Laurie Anderson and a toned-down Joanna Newsom. It's a curious one. It didn't quite move me, but it piqued my interest 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like interesting, dense, reverby, deliberately-paced art-rock and/or delicate, wily female vocals.
#380 Typhoon - Hunger and Thirst
Recommended strongly by someone I met online. Always taking rec's!
Here you have some pretty stark, slightly devastating near-emo indie rock, evoking Okkervil River's operatic sweep in particular, with hints of The Mountain Goats, Bright Eyes and the usual similar suspects. Musically, there's a frail vocal backbone through it, but the band surges prog-huge over and over again, coming in with brokedown angular waltz rhythms, NMH hotel horn peans, and choral swoons. It really comes together best on the more upbeat, complex tracks like CPR Claws pt 2., the more stripped-down songs are just to bare to me.
Rumor is the singer was in the midst of some potentially-terminal disease during the album's creation, so I suppose I can't fault someone for singing about what they know, but I'm just not in a place in my life to enjoy song after song ruminating on sickness and death 2.5/5
You might like this if: You like big, complex folky indie, and are up for some pretty stark discussions of emptiness and mortality.
Here you have some pretty stark, slightly devastating near-emo indie rock, evoking Okkervil River's operatic sweep in particular, with hints of The Mountain Goats, Bright Eyes and the usual similar suspects. Musically, there's a frail vocal backbone through it, but the band surges prog-huge over and over again, coming in with brokedown angular waltz rhythms, NMH hotel horn peans, and choral swoons. It really comes together best on the more upbeat, complex tracks like CPR Claws pt 2., the more stripped-down songs are just to bare to me.
Rumor is the singer was in the midst of some potentially-terminal disease during the album's creation, so I suppose I can't fault someone for singing about what they know, but I'm just not in a place in my life to enjoy song after song ruminating on sickness and death 2.5/5
You might like this if: You like big, complex folky indie, and are up for some pretty stark discussions of emptiness and mortality.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
#379 Steve Hackett - Genesis Revisited
Ever since I moved to Boston I have been listening to nothing new. Partially its that working with arm's reach of your boss isn't that conducive to work listening. I did hear about this recently though - I'm a big believe in Hackett's centrality to Genesis's heyday-era output, so this seemed like it had potential.
Left me limp though. One problem here is the choice of tracks: we get takes on Your Own Special Way and For Absent Friends, which were never especially interesting tracks, and a series of unreleased tracks, which really sound like more-modern prog-lite: too crisply produced, too stringy, too forced in their Bombast, too Journey. The only really promising attempts are Watcher of the Skies (which is too faithful, sounding a bit uncanny) and Dance on a Volcano (which is at least a bit more adventurous, and the standout of the album).
The album title is a bit too accurate. This is Genesis revisited, but just gussied up without a lot of real craft or spirit of adventure. I wanted Genesis reinvented, or at least respected 2/5
You might like this if: you liked Genesis's shorter, sweeter songs, or wished that their more epic songs had more strings and production polish. You like lightweight prog and want to ease into the messier stuff.
Left me limp though. One problem here is the choice of tracks: we get takes on Your Own Special Way and For Absent Friends, which were never especially interesting tracks, and a series of unreleased tracks, which really sound like more-modern prog-lite: too crisply produced, too stringy, too forced in their Bombast, too Journey. The only really promising attempts are Watcher of the Skies (which is too faithful, sounding a bit uncanny) and Dance on a Volcano (which is at least a bit more adventurous, and the standout of the album).
The album title is a bit too accurate. This is Genesis revisited, but just gussied up without a lot of real craft or spirit of adventure. I wanted Genesis reinvented, or at least respected 2/5
You might like this if: you liked Genesis's shorter, sweeter songs, or wished that their more epic songs had more strings and production polish. You like lightweight prog and want to ease into the messier stuff.
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